The Titles of Kings
by enaskoritsi
Summary: Lionel, Alexander, Lillian, and Julian. The Luthor family, haunted and cursed by Lex's namesake.


_Disclaimer: _I do not own Smallville, Superman, or any related characters. They all belong to their respective owners._  
_

_A/N:_ While reading an amazing book about Alexander the Great, I noticed many parallels between Lex and Alexander. Then my mind started going and this story came out of it. There is a second part, so please review if you'd like to read it as well.

Also, this story is more about the Luthor family than any pairing, but there may be mentioning of Clark/Lex in the second half. As it's still unwritten, it may just be friendship.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the story.

* * *

The Titles of Kings

* * *

When Lionel Luthor first saw his son, he was cradled in his mother's arms; asleep, helpless, and vulnerable. His skin was still red, eyes still swollen shut; a frail tiny thing that was of no use for him currently, yet could brim with possibly.

When he entered the room, dressed in his business best, Lillian did not look at him immediately. Her eyes were weary, but the blue in them was bright as she gazed at his child, her arms curled around the small form they had created. Her hold was secure, and it was claiming, a hand cradling the boy's head that told the world that this was her son. She appeared a mother, and even in the hospital garb, she exuded strength, a presence, a spirit that would not be dominated in her task.

Only then did she turn her gaze to Lionel, and Lillian's challenging stare repeated all those warnings again. Lionel looked back, and he welcomed the easy, smug smile that slithered across his face as he drew closer, closer to see the boy wrapped in baby blue. The color almost made him frown; such a delicate, weak image it made.

His son's head rested on Lillian's chest, a faint dusting of red hair the only color he had. Lionel could not help the irritation he felt, the impatience that the sleeping child gave him. He expected a warrior, not an infant who could not yet even see.

He then knew that he would have to groom the boy, teach him and guide him until he deserved the mantle his father had crafted for him. He would raise a son intelligent and powerful, quick-witted and prepared for the world that he would conquer before it could conquer him. Lionel knew everything his son would have to be, all the things he would make his son be, and the steps to make things so.

Then he looked back at his wife's face, and Lillian was frowning, her hair messy and wild around her pale face. When he stepped closer, her arms curled around the child tighter, presently protecting while Lionel knew she would later be dotting. That was something he could not allow.

Tilting his head at the pair, Lionel knew his Alexander could not grow up with an Olympias meddling at his side. He could not be coddled with constant praise and a biased word. His son would be that, his son, a follower of the father that knew how to survive. He would not be influenced by Lillian; he would not grow quiet and meek, all the things that a Luthor should never be. The child would never be his mother's boy.

This in mind, Lionel stepped away from the two, mind full of ways to make his son grow, challenges to shape and mold and strengthen, to create a man that would never falter, would never break. A few words to Lillian and Lionel departed, LuthorCorp forever needing his guidance if he should ever leave a permanent legacy behind.

He paused in the corridor, wrinkling his noise at the sick and the dying, when he heard his wife's voice.

"Alexander," she breathed, and Lionel shifted silently to the window, peering into the room, surreptitious and soundless. "My baby."

Lionel smirked to himself as he strode towards the doors, reveling in the way he burst through them, forceful and intimidating.

No, Lillian. My son.

* * *

When his son spoke his first words, Lionel wasn't there. A highly precarious takeover procedure had required his direct attention, and the specific message on his cell phone was buried under many more urgent matters.

The child was a mere eight and a half months old, and the fact that he had uttered a comprehensible word was impressive if nothing else. The news had filled Lionel with a sharp bloom of pride while he was signing papers and handling negotiations, the short demonstration that his son was already exceeding the expectations for a child of his limited age. However, it wasn't enough for him to cut an important day of work short. His family would be waiting for him after the day was finished, but this deal would not.

Upon arriving home, Lionel was welcomed by the combined sound of feminine laughter and the high-pitched, uncontrolled giggles of a child. Placing his briefcase in his office and his jacket in the closet located in the corner of the room, he set out purposefully for the source.

The noises were coming from Lillian's rooms, and he made his way there, striding confidently through the hallways, darkened with the light of a fading sun.

He stopped outside the doorway, the joyous laughter louder there. Alexander's nanny sat on the floor with his son, the boy sitting in her lap. Lillian was hunched over a across the room, patting her knees with an encouraging smile.

"Here, Alexander," she smiled, pink lips quirking with pride as the boy turned his head at the sound of his name. "Walk to me. Come to your mother."

The nurse, Pamela Jenkins, lifted Alexander out of her lap, placing him on the floor. His eyes, the same shade of his mothers', turned to look at her with what could have been a look of overblown betrayal. Pamela laughed softly, stepping back and gesturing towards Lillian, who stood patiently, her own smile never dimming as she waited.

"Go on, to your mother, Alexander," she repeated the name, and upon the word 'mother,' the child's head turned back to Lillian. He sat for only a moment before shifting, struggling to his feet with legs still unaccustomed to handling his own weight. The boy had started walking a week ago, taking short steps before collapsing back onto the floor. The progress was slow, and Lionel found the length it took infuriating, no matter how advanced the doctors tried to tell him his son's actions were. Luthors worked until they were masters at whatever task was in their sights, and Lionel expected no less than his son, no matter his age.

Alexander's steps weren't unsteady as he walked, but his pace was sluggish, filled with pauses. Each time he wobbled, Alexander halted, face screwed up in what was probably intense concentration, until he could stand still again. Then he continued his progress. He rushed too quickly when he came closer to his mother's open arms, slack mouth twisting into an excited grin, and he fell in his effort to move faster.

Lillian caught the boy easily, swinging him up and to her chest, holding him as he laughed and curled his little hands in her red tresses. She drew one hand of her own through Alexander's growing hair, but the boy shook his head in minute distress. Pamela watched from the side, an indulgent, contented look gracing her features.

Lionel felt a thread of displeasure travel through his veins. A Luthor had iron self-control, one more trait that his son was obviously lacking in.

"Ma," Alexander murmured, resting his head on Lillian's shoulder. His wife's smile went from the previously anticipating one to an expression of pride, and love.

Lionel thought it time to make his presence known.

He stepped fully inside the room, noticing how the grins dimmed even while Lillian continued swaying with the boy. He stepped around the blocks and other rubber, garishly colorful toys littering the floor, making a note to have them removed. The child was almost a year in age, old enough for more respectable pursuits.

"Good to see you, Lillian," Lionel greeted with a nod, the words somewhat heavy and formal, which was not precisely his intention.

Pamela stepped forward, arms reaching for Alexander, who had grown quiet. She offered, "I can ready Alexander for bed-"

"No, no," Lionel shook his head, taking note of the expression of hidden relief that died on his wife's face. "I'd like to see what my son has accomplished today."

Giving Pamela a passing glance, he dismissed, "You may retire for the evening, Ms. Jenkins."

The woman stopped, looking torn, but a flicker of Lillian's eyes had her leaving the room compliantly. Lionel turned back to his wife, who was watching him as one should watch a viper preparing to hiss and strike. Inside he chuckled, for if Shuichi Kayashima had known to think of him the same way, Kayashima Industries wouldn't have joined LuthorCorp's empire that afternoon.

"You're late tonight," Lillian acknowledged with some coldness, and Lionel returned his attention back to her.

"And much richer for it," he replied. "I've been told that Alexander learned to speak today."

Lillian nodded, a look of gallant pride painting over her face before fading.

"Yes," she responded, her tone almost a whisper as the boy in her arms pressed his head against her shoulder with a few tired sounds. "He's…brilliant."

"Walking and talking," Lionel spoke with some disgust at the mundane words, "is not brilliant, Lillian. He's barely ahead of any other child his age."

He could feel Lillian's defenses rising, and he quickly sliced off that stem of thought with, "So what has our son learned then? What words have formed in his limited vocabulary?"

Immediately, Lillian replied, "He's able to recognize me. I know you heard that."

His face didn't change as she acknowledged this. He had not been obligated to announce his presence if the pair had not been able to notice it, and he had the right to watch his son in his own home.

"He can say Pamela's name as well, although he's shortened it a little," Lillian added, and with an unexpected murmur, Alexander muttered, "Pam."

"So I see," Lionel said, clasping his hands behind his back. "Is that all?"

Pursing her lips, Lillian nodded, obviously itching to add more.

"Please, Lillian," Lionel sighed with some exasperation. "Struggling with two simple words is no great accomplishment. You can't honestly have expected me to cut the day short for such a thing."

"He's your son, Lionel," she pressed, the statement a rare one to pass through her lips. "Alexander spoke his first words today. You should be proud."

"As you've now told me multiple times," Lionel retorted. "No one needs to remind me of my son, least of all the person who is so adamantly determined to keep him from being so."

"Son isn't meant to mean soldier," Lillian prodded, lowering her tone when Alexander started whining.

"He's my heir," Lionel reminded, trading one word for another. "He's going to inherit the empire I'm creating. He cannot grow up coddled. He must be strong to overcome the challenges that await him."

"He's not even a year old yet," Lillian shied from the image, all facades of discussion tossed aside as she slipped into her protective shoes, donning a defensive robe of the poisonous maternal reasoning Lionel knew he had to shelter his son from. "Alexander is still a child. He needs love, not just Pamela's and my own. You're his father, Lionel. That does not mean you need to train him. It means you need to care for him!"

Lionel glanced upon his wife's infuriated face with distaste.

"Allowing him to grow up weak is not love," he informed Lillian, who thinned her lips. "It only displays one's own weakness. Alexander must learn to prove himself. He cannot grow to expect to be praised at every stair he climbs."

"Phillip II," he began, "spent his son's childhood conquering Greece to leave behind an empire for his inheritance. He sent the boy to the greatest teachers of the time, so that Alexander would be a king in his own right, not simply by that same inheritance. The boy grew into a warrior because he was taught, challenged, not pampered like the other princes that dotted the globe. Do you believe Alexander would have accomplished so much if Olympias hadn't encouraged him to excel at these things? If she had spent her time with him…"

He took a glimpse down as the shined toe of his shoe hit a small wooden toy.

"…playing with building blocks?"

Abruptly, Lillian laughed darkly, which Lionel was not expecting. Under the layers of his skin and soul he tensed at the miscalculation when Lillain stepped forward, still cradling their son to her heart. The boy had fallen asleep despite the timeless battle playing out in front of him, and the fire in Lillian's eyes set a disturbing picture compared to her delicate hold on the sleeping child.

"You're so fond of those stories, but have you forgotten," Lillian replied in a hiss, "what happened to Phillip II, after he abandoned his son, labeling him as a bastard to make him 'stronger?'"

She stepped closer, her mouth set in a lioness' protective snarl as she continued, "He was murdered, sliced down in front of the people he conquered the same day he attempted to place himself among their gods. Do you remember who commissioned the man who killed him?"

Lifting her mouth to his ear, Lionel did not flinch as Lillian whispered, "His son."

She stepped back, looking undeservedly triumphant as she finished, "That's the part of the tale that you need to remember, Lionel."

Without another word, she swept out of the room, and when Lionel turned to watch her depart, he could see Alexander's sleeping face resting on her shoulder.

Despite his pride, pounding with frustration and rage, Lionel knew that his wife was right. Phillip II had made a mistake, leaving Alexander and Olympias together for so many years, especially when the boy was so impressionable. It made it easy for the pair to turn against him, to plan his death and move swiftly onto the throne once his ashes were buried beneath the ground.

This was a lesson Lionel would remember.

* * *

When Lionel saw true weakness growing in his son, he shortened his name.

Despite his best efforts, filling his son's room with high bookcases brimming with texts, gifting with chessboards and lessons in strategy and manipulation, the boy was not maturing the way he planned. Giving his son lectures on business and tact were countered when Lillian embraced him, erasing his words with speeches on how perfect he already was. When he chastised his son for allowing his physical illnesses to limit his potential, Lillian unbraided what he had hoped would be incentive by allowing the boy to find solace in her thin arms, as if that would protect him from the world.

"By the time Alexander was seven, he could entertain envoys from Persia effortlessly," Lionel announced, pacing before his son who was the same age as the boy in the tale. He stood with his head bowed in trepidation, skin pale with a nervous, sickly sheen. "Yet you've been unable to foster any connections at school, and your studies have proven only adequate."

While the child had shown himself to be intelligent, scoring exceedingly well in his classes, such academic successes were expected. The boy read vastly, but his nose was always buried in tomes of science. If he picked up something historic, it was for legends and fables, not for the men who stamped their seals upon their breastplates.

"I'm sorry, Dad," his son started apologizing, voice faint with the omnipresent threat of asthma tainting the edges, shouting out to the world, 'Look upon my weakness! See how fragile and frail I am!' "Everyone else can-"

"Don't make excuses for your shortcomings," Lionel warned the boy, agitation and bitter disappointment sharpening his tone. "Strive to grow stronger, to overcome and surpass them. I don't want to hear reasons. I want solutions."

The entire conversation felt like a lecture he often had to give to an underdeveloped employee, fresh and raw in the field, unsure of where to go or how. Lionel didn't tolerate such failure, and if it hadn't been his son shaking in front of him, he would've fired the subject of his tirade and had him banished from his domain immediately.

"I tell you these things for your own good, Son," Lionel sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose while the last word burned mockingly on his tongue. "You cannot grow up lacking confidence if you plan to succeed. I have secured a future for you, but you need to make yourself deserving of it, otherwise it will never be yours. Do you understand, Lex?"

The revised name came easily, and his son's head lifted cautiously, eyes wide as he tried to decipher if it was a term of endearment or degradation. The boy's face fell as he came to a conclusion, and Lionel was glad that he had enough intuition for that at least. It wouldn't do if he couldn't even distinguish where he stood in a person's graces.

And the name would stick, because Lionel had named his son for Alexander the Great, a man who shaped the world with his intelligence and will. Lionel gave him the name for someone to emulate, to surpass with his own glory and greatness, and the boy was living up to none of his expectations. He didn't deserve the name, and until he did, there would be Lex and Lex alone.

After a few more worthless exchanges, Lionel let the boy go, but instead of staying behind, he followed a few corners behind as weak legs raced down the corridors. Lionel noticed with black contempt that Lex had run for his mother's room. As he stood outside the door, Lionel mused that the only way he seemed to be able to catch a glimpse of his family's true nature was by hiding in the shadows like someone common. He despised that anyone could dare wash that feeling upon him.

He heard Lex's weak, "Mom," and from the rustling that followed, Lionel could picture the two of them on Lillian's bed. They spent more time in her room than they had in previous years, as Lillian had been strangely tired of late. The two were probably curled together, his son's head petted by Lillian's worshipping hands.

"It's okay, Alexander," she spoke in hushed tones, shushing the unhappy child.

"Dad says I'm not doing well enough," the boy revealed, tone horribly watery and weepy. Lionel could even hear the vile sniffling of his nose.

"Your father," Lillian began, pausing to soften the blatant loathing in her voice to simple dislike. "Your father has a very limited view. He doesn't understand that you are trying your best."

"It's not my fault that the other kids don't like me," Lex replied in pouting tones. "I can't play the games everyone else can, and they aren't interested in all the things in the books Dad gives me. He tells me I need to read them, but no one wants to play with the kid reading about dead people."

His voice turned expectantly bitter, and Lillian's response was reproachful.

"Alexander, don't speak of a subject you love so much that way," she reprimanded, her words revealing there would not be negotiation. "You shouldn't allow your father to stop the things you enjoy from bringing you happiness."

There was the shifting of limbs, and Lionel could picture his wife lifting his son's chin to see his eyes, eyes that had not yet learned that it was not right to show each and every secret.

"Why do you read your books, Alexander? Why would you read them even if your father didn't tell you to?"

There were a few slow seconds of thought before Lex responded, "They…help. I can read about someone braver, or someone who could do amazing things. There are kings and knights and all these people with causes and goals. I can, I can learn from it, from their morals and lessons, just like they did."

"It's comforting for you," Lillian summed up simply, and he heard Lex's affirmation.

"But I can't…" the boy added, his words sad. "It's nice to disappear for a little while, but I can't be them, not the way Dad wants me to."

"Of course you can't," Lillian agreed swiftly. "You can be no one but yourself, and that's a beautiful gift, Alexander. Why would you want to anyone but who you are when you have so much to offer?"

"No one else thinks so," Lex grumbled, and it filled Lionel with irritation. Such self-pity should be weeded out of the boy while he was still young, not watered and encouraged with such conversations.

"They're blind," Lillian assured him instead, and Lionel knew they were back to embracing. "Don't blame them if they can't understand because one day they will."

Returning to what had been the subject at hand, Lillian preached, "Don't doubt your worth. Your father…he cares for you, and he just wants to keep life from getting difficult. There is no one on this planet that's perfect, and we all have shortcomings. Your father can barely see his own, and that's why he sees everyone else's so brightly."

When he heard his son start crying, Lionel left the scene and returned to his office. Within a few short hours, Lex Luthor was enrolled in a prestigious boarding school continents away.

It seemed putting himself between mother and son had not been enough. Perhaps a few hundred thousand miles would produce a more satisfactory result.

* * *

When Lex was nine, Lionel took him to where the sky fell down, and his son burned.

It was at a hospital located in Smallville, Kansas where Lionel stared at his son, bruised, barely breathing, and bald, and realized that he would never have the heir he wanted. The boy before had been too weak, and the boy afterwards was too disfigured, and neither could satisfy the mold Lionel was determined his successor would fit into easily.

Back with a broken child, Lionel had never seen more rage in Lillian's face, more hatred in the glare that tainted her vision as she stared at him over her son's bare head.

"How could you let this happen?" she demanded once they were alone, when she had had her fill of a Lex with traumatized, frozen eyes but breathing that didn't jump and falter as it once did.

"He wandered off into the cornfields," Lionel gave as way of explanation, his own bitterness at his son's horrific handicap seeping through his tone. "I deliberately told him not to wander off, but he must've found it incredibly easy to disobey. We both know who fostered that trait in him."

Lillian refused to reply to the last sentence, instead questioning, "Why weren't you watching him? I asked you to take Alexander with you to repair whatever fragments of a relationship you have left, and you couldn't even keep him in your sight?"

"It was a business trip!" Lionel growled back, emotions getting the best of him. "I was securing our future, Lex's future. He should've had enough discipline to stay put when I told him to do so!"

"He's a boy, Lionel! Of course he'd be curious, and of course he'd become bored if you're talking about contracts and fine lines that he has no part in!" Lillian burst, her face leaving the shocked white behind and flushing a furious red.

"Which is why," Lionel replied sharply, "I did not want him accompanying me on the trip, Lillian."

"When else would you see him?" she retorted, gaze wild. "You send him off to schools across the ocean, and I know it's because you don't want me to see him. There are plenty of schools close enough to home for Lex to receive a fine education. But by sending him away, what sort of relationship can he even build with you?"

"I'm not an opponent in raising our son, Lionel," Lillian concluded, jaw hard. "But I won't let him grow up thinking he's worthless. I'm his mother, and I will protect him, even if it is from you. Love isn't a weakness; it's a strength. I will teach him that."

"Your teachings made him weak," Lionel spat in response, his ears scraped raw with her ridiculous tirade. "It was thanks to your teaching that Lex is…damaged!"

Lillian fell silent, and the tension clouding the air became thick, tangible as it felt uncomfortably sticky against Lionel's skin.

"My son," she finally said, each word heavy and carved out of stone, "is not damaged."

"Oh, Lillian," Lionel replied lightly, content to lace his words with the cruelty writhing inside. "Have you not just seen the boy?"

"He'll be stronger for it," came Lillian's quiet but assured response, but Lionel only scoffed at what he knew was a distinct impossibility.

"If there is one thing Lex has always lacked," Lionel remembered her, "it is strength."

Lillian looked like she wanted to laugh for a moment, but then she leaned her head to the side, sizing him up with a shocking amount of seriousness. Her blue eyes grew large with sadness, and she whispered, "You really don't know our son, do you, Lionel? You don't know Alexander at all."

"I've seen enough to know that he won't live up to the Luthor name," Lionel slandered in response, but Lillian only stared at him with two silvery pools of pity. Still underneath, in the murky depths, there was a smug, inky blackness.

* * *

Julian Luthor came into the world when Lex was eleven years old, and in him Lionel saw the possibility to finally gain the son he always wanted.

Lillian may have rebelled against him, and she may have even purely hated him at points if not always, but she was his wife and she knew when she was forced to heel. So when Lionel wanted another son, he received one, even if the differences in his birth were striking.

There was no warm motherly scene for this child, and in fact, Lillian outright refused to hold the infant. Every moment he was mentioned, her face twisted with disgust and uncontrollable animosity. She shrunk away from Julian upon sight, and so Lionel looked down upon Julian for the first time in the hospital nursery.

Named after another great conqueror, this son would be great, powerful and strong-willed where the other was not. The factor that had made Lex weak had gratefully removed herself from the equation, and Lionel had not even had to play his own hand.

Lionel had his Caranus, but this Phillip would not be killed and so this son would not perish in kind.

But he had underestimated what history had tried to warn him of. His wife spurned the child so completely that even his own attempts to charm her into tolerating him were failures. She drew even closer to Lex, praising him and mentoring the boy, and if Lionel did not have Julian, he would've interfered again most drastically.

Once, when he dragged her into the nursery, away from where she had been reading to Lex out of a cherished, leather-bound text, she stood above the crib and cringed at the baby below.

"You plan to replace Alexander," she acknowledged, her voice brittle. She had grown even more ill later, bouts of mere weariness morphing into lengthy periods of pain and fatigue.

"He's not suitable," Lionel replied easily, feeling a glimmer of affection towards the second son sleeping before him. "But you don't need to worry. I'll find something for Lex, to keep him busy."

Lillian turned away from Julian's cradle quickly, facing Lionel with an infuriated grimace.

"He has a right," she demanded, one pale fist clenched in a grip that must've been painful. "Alexander's your first born, my son. I won't allow him to be pushed aside-"

"Now, now," Lionel tried to calm her, his voice reassuring. "It's not as if I'd leave him destitute. You're not thinking clearly, Lillian."

"You'll leave him nothing," she refused to be deterred, but Lionel just smiled, looking down at his son.

"Lex will receive what he earns," Lionel stated. "As will Julian."

When he glanced back towards his wife, Lillian's face was a mixture of loathing, determination, mania, and fear. If he had heeded it more carefully, perhaps he could've prevented the events that followed. As it was, Lionel brimmed with twisted pride at her expression, cutting down the Amazon that had dared to sway the tides upon which his ship sailed.

The trump card was perched between his fingers. If he turned the paper around, however, he would've seen the joker grinning back at him.

Later, of course, he found Lex, hiding in the shadows with a corpse in the crib. Alexander had dispatched for Caranus' removal, but in this revisal he had pushed his brother into the coals with his own hands. And while it was years later that he learned that it was Olympias who had smothered the boy on her own, in the true fashion of the tale, Lionel believed then, in that specific moment, that he had been wrong about his first-born son.

Lex was not the useless child Lionel had stated he was. He was disobedient, emotion-driven, and he was a monster with the capability of murdering his own brother.

But when his future was threatened, when the legacy that he had been promised was no longer held in front of him, Lex brutally showed what he would dare to grasp it back.

So while Lionel saw one son staring down at the other, while his hand reached out to take retribution as he was due, and while his heart was pounding with hatred and disgust, and the tiniest shred of mourning, Lionel couldn't help but feel an inkling of pride.

* * *

When he decided it was time for Lex to become the son he deserved, Lionel sent him to Smallville.

He knew the action would undoubtedly be considered incredibly unkind, for a father to send his son to a place that had permanently scarred him, tearing a piece of his life away. But a man could not balk at such memories. Fears must be mastered and potential found even in the worst of conditions.

So he sent Lex out to Smallville after he had dusted himself off from his brief bout of rebellion with a clap on the back and a warning tucked into his pocket.

Succeed. Prove to me that you are of worth, my son, or there will be nothing for you.

If he were honest, Lionel would have to admit that he expected his son to fail. He was sending his son out alone, to a town that hated his name and family tree, a man undisciplined, spineless, and ruled by the weak heart that had sent his mother to an early grave. And part of him wanted to witness such a spectacle, to see his son, who walked with such undeserved pride, kneeling in forgiveness, begging for the guidance Lionel had tried to offer, only to be turned away.

So Lionel expected two outcomes; success and a glorifying return to Metropolis, or submission against the daunting task and a rebuked son back under his wing. What he had not predicted was independence.

Lex's strategy in Smallville could be compared in its genius to Alexander's masterful strategy against Glaucias and his army of crude barbarians.

Previously, the boy had displayed nothing of his potential, instead swaying from bookish and bullied to petulant and criminal. In his training, he had been silent, and Lionel had foolishly slipped into a dumb state, believing in the show his son had so brilliantly put on.

Then, suddenly, with a burst of battle cry that sent the forces of the phalanx forward with weapons swinging, Alexander became free, ingenious and capable and everything his son had never been before.

He was defiant, but shrewd, standing up against his father when he knew the dice were rolling in his favor. He was thinking twenty steps ahead, quickly catching up to Lionel's own thirty, earning profit and respect with each snap of the fingers.

This was the son he had wanted, buried deep inside the man he had bred, and Lionel found himself overwhelmed in the glory of it.

But still, at the same time, Lionel couldn't swallow the golden cup of resentment that the fates had placed upon his place.

Lionel had given Lex his Bucephalas, the challenge that he could never tame, the beast that he could never call to heal. Smallville, with its frightening history, with its narrow-minded people, with its slowly crumbling lifestyle; Smallville should've burned Lex once he dared to touch.

Instead Lex had gazed upon the wild creature. He had touched here and there, patted and prodded, working out the weakness and the wild parts until he found the place that would open up and welcome him.

Then Lex flew into the saddle, claiming the horse to ride through the town, marking it as his own great success.

It was unpredicted. It was somewhat unprecedented. It was not what Lionel had had in mind.

His efforts to regain control were thwarted. He tossed inconceivable hurdles in Lex's way, and the boy calculated the precise leap needed to skim over them. He offered Lex his future on carefully sculpted silver platters, and his son melted the metal down and forged a sword.

Lionel cast Lex's meager fraction out of LuthorCorp, his grand Philippopolis, and Lex built Alexandropolis eagerly and proudly out of the ruins.

And the city prospered.


End file.
